The wives the BBC spoke to in 2008 said they met Mr Abubakar when they went to him to seek help for various illnesses, which they say he cured.

"I don't go looking for them, they come to me. I will consider the fact that God has asked me to do it and I will just marry them," he said.

Ganiat Mohammed Bello, who had been married to him for 20 years when she spoke to the BBC in 2008, said she met him when she was in secondary school and her mother took her for a consultation with him. He proposed afterwards, she said.

"I said I couldn't marry an older man, but he said it was directly an order from God," she said.

Such claims alienated the Islamic authorities in Nigeria, who had branded his family a cult.